Plastic’s Day With the Brightest FinTech Leaders at #FinTechTO

From Uber to Airbnb, there’s no doubt that the majority of industries are faced with disruption from digital newcomers everyday, and the financial industry is no different. On August 19th we joined the Digital Finance Institute at FinTechTO for a day filled with the latest in financial technology.

The full day event in the heart of downtown Toronto featured the brightest leaders in fintech with speakers from Google, TD, ScotiaBank, Mastercard and CIBC (to name a few), on topics ranging from anti-money laundering and fighting financial crime, to financial inclusion and banking innovation. And for the grand finale? Google shared a super exclusive, top secret keynote (stay tuned for their future announcements)!

Leaving the venue absolutely packed with new info, here are some of our favourite facts and discussions of the day.

FinTech Takeaways:

– From the challenging process of tracing and validating credit, to facing an intangible global market, the industry faces many hurdles everyday

– When it comes to Bitcoins, the level of their anonymity depends on what we want to tolerate as a society

– With the advancements in technology and the increase in fraudulent behaviour, the Canadian legislators are working to keep up with the pace and adapt to the changes

– Stats show that 92% of the time, Uber users rate their experience 5 stars. We have come to expect this type of seamless experience across all tech platforms, setting the bar pretty high for fintech!

– Digital offerings have become the center of our lives; with 73% of millennials even expressing their desire to bank with digital forums such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook, rather than established financial institutions

– By the year 2020, 3 Billion people will own mobile phones & 50 Billion devices will be connected to the internet!